BLANKA

I’m not much of a video game guy these days and never really have been. I’ve owned my fair share of entertainment systems over the years, my current roster consists of a PS3, a Wii, a Gamecube, an N64 and a Sega Saturn. I’m sometimes jealous of those guys who get so much out of a new game release and can spend hours upon hours lost in the world of Halo or Call of Duty. I worked at Blockbuster for 12 years so I saw these guys up close and personal, salivating as I unlocked the game cabinet to hand them the latest Metal Gear Solid or having them lined up outside the store for the midnight release of Madden or NHL each year. Guys would come in boasting about how they beat the game in a mere 90 hours as they pay off their $25 late charge. Every time I buy a new game thinking “this will keep me entertained” I’m wrong. It takes a special kind of game to hold my interest. And I don’t mean a game better than those million dollar selling franchise games necessarily, just something special that I can’t quite put my finger on. There have been a few games over the years which I latched onto and have lost weeks of my life to. The old school Mario games, every release of Mario Kart, Golden Eye of course, Pikmin and the last couple of years it’s been Sid Meyer’s Civilization that I revisit every time I’m feeling “gamey”. Fighting games don’t hold my interest any longer but back in the day it was a different story. Being a Saturn kid I was all about Virtua Fighter 2, the Marvel vs Capcom games were great and gave me a chance to kick ass as a Sentinel, and Mortal Kombat was so dark and cool even though I never once mastered a fatality. The king of fighting games though had to be Street Fighter. I loved the characters and the story and the moves and the colors; It was all top notch. I could button mash my way to victory against even the most seasoned pro and it was just fun to look at. Street Fighter’s first foray in the world of action figures was actually as a subset of my beloved G.I. Joe. Those figures were f**king horrible. My little bro had a few which I can’t recall if I inherited or not. The E. Honda was kinda neat at least because of his unique shape if nothing else. New Street Fighter figures have started showing up in stores just a month or so ago, crappy little ones for kids and big fancy expensive ones for collectors.

My Blanka figure came out in 1999 and was made by defunct toy company Resaurus. I think the Street Fighter figures that these guys put out were pretty awesome. They didn’t manage to get the whole cast released but they got most of them. I only picked up Blanka and Cammy as I was giving all my money to George Lucas those days. The size of these figures is nice , at 6″+ it lets the sculptors capture a lot of detail that you couldn’t get in the Joe sized figures. Blanka has a great face sculpt. It doesn’t look angry so much as dumb with the potential for danger. The hair is done brilliantly like a spiky sea urchin. His body is big , thick and hunchy with appropriate muscles and hair patches. If there was one thing that hurt this line it’s the lack of articulation. Blanka has no knee or elbow joints so that really limits his pose options. The colors are great and look like he leapt right from the video game. Resaurus also went to the extra mile by releasing “player 2” color versions of each of the figures as variants. A gimmick that every company who has made SF figures since has aped. 6 out of 10.

You can’t say you’re not into video games and then list a roster of consoles more than 2 times larger than what most hardcore gamers would have.

Games don’t mean as much to me these days, but I still get a excited about a few of them. None make me pick them up on release date however, and I am often patient enough to get them after a significant price drop.

It’s true i own a bunch of systems but i never play them and i just never get rid of them. I’ve had that Saturn for like 20 years. I only got the PS3 for the bluray. The last game I bought was Transformers: war for cybertron. I didn’t play beyond the first boss which is like 20 mins in. just got bored. I do play alotof mine sweeper on my computer though.